An Online Reference Guide to African American History
Quintard Taylor
Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History
University of Washington, Seattle
An Online Reference Guide to African American History
Quintard Taylor
Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Professor of American History
University of Washington, Seattle
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African American History Timelines:
ca. 4500 BCE--Egyptians begin using burial texts to accompany their dead into the afterlife. This is the first evidence of written texts anywhere in the world.
ca. 4000 BCE--Egypt emerges as a centralized state and flourshing civilization.
ca. 2500 BCE--Other civilizations emerge in Mesopotamia, Northern China and Northeastern India.
ca. 2500 BCE--Nubian state with it s capital at Kerma emerges as a rival to Egypt.
ca. 750-664 BCE--Nubian Pharoahs rule the entire Nile Valley during the 20th Dynasty.
ca. 500 BCE--Axum emerges in Northeastern Africa.
332 BCE--Egypt is conquered by Alexander the Great.
47-30 BCE--Cleopatra Rules Egypt.
341--King Ezana of Axum (Ethiopia) converts to Christianity.
476—End of the Roman Empire.
639--Egypt is conquered and converted to Islam.
750—Islam is introduced in West Africa.
c. 800—Evidence suggests that African travelers may have come to the Americas before Europeans. One indication is the great stone carvings of the Olmec era in Mexico, bearing African facial features.
951—Paris is founded.
1076—The Empire of Ghana emerges in West Africa.
1230—The Empire of Mali emerges in West Africa.
1260—By this date the city of Timbuktu is the religious, commercial and political center of the Empire of Mali.
1400—By this date a flourishing slave trade exists in the Mediterranean World. Most of the slaving countries are Italian principalities such as Florence and Venice. Most of those enslaved are Greeks and Eastern Europeans. Between 1414 and 1423, ten thousand Eastern European slaves are sold in Venice alone.
1434—The Portuguese establish trading outposts along the West African coast.
1441—Antam Goncalvez of Portugal captures Africans in what is now Senegal, initiating direct European involvement in the African slave trade.
1450—The Kingdom of Benin emerges in West Africa.
1453—The Ottoman Turks capture Constantinople and thus divert the trade in Eastern European slaves away from the Mediterranean to Islamic markets. The Italians increasingly look to North Africa as their source for slaves.
1464—The Empire of Songhai emerges in West Africa.
1468—Mali conquered by the Empire of Songhai.
1470—By this point small vineyards and sugar plantations have emerged around Naples and on the island of Sicily with Africans as the primary enslaved people providing the labor on these estates.
1490—Small populations of free and enslaved Africans extend from Sicily to Portugal.
1492—Christopher Columbus makes his first voyage to the New World opening a vast new empire for plantation slavery.
1494—The first Africans arrive in Hispaniola with Christopher Columbus. They are free persons.
1501—The Spanish king allows the introduction of enslaved Africans into Spain's American colonies.
1511—The first enslaved Africans arrive in Hispaniola.
1513—Thirty Africans accompany Vasco Nunez de Balboa on his trip to the Pacific Ocean.
1517—Bishop Bartolome de Las Casas petitions Spain to allow the importation of twelve enslaved Africans for each household immigrating to America's Spanish colonies. De Las Casas later regrets his actions and becomes an opponent of slavery.
1518—King Charles I of Spain grants the first licenses to import enslaved Africans to the Americas.
The first shipload of enslaved Africans directly from Africa arrives in the West Indies. Prior to this time, Africans were brought first to Europe.
1519—Hernan Cortez begins conquest of the Aztec Empire.
1520s—Enslaved Africans are used as laborers in Puerto Rico, Cuba and Mexico.
1522—African slaves stage a rebellion in Hispaniola. This is the first slave uprising in the New World.
1526—Spanish colonists led by Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon build the community of San Miguel de Guadape in what is now Georgia. They bring along enslaved Africans, considered to be the first in the present-day United States. These Africans flee the colony, however, and make their homes with local Indians. After Ayllon's death, the remaining Spaniards relocate to Hispaniola.
1527-1539—Esteban, a Moroccan-born Muslim slave, explores what is now the Southwestern United States.
1540—An African from Hernando de Soto's Expedition decides to remain behind to make his home among the Native Americans there.
Africans serve in the New Mexico Expeditions of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado and Hernando de Alarcon.
1542—The Spanish Crown abolishes Indian slavery.
1550—The first slaves directly from Africa arrive in the Brazilian city of Salvador.
1562—An expedition to Hispaniola led by John Hawkins, the first English slave trader, sparks English interest in that activity. Hawkins' travels also call attention to Sierra Leone. Hawkins is knighted in 1588 for his service in England's victory over the Spanish Armada.
1565—African farmers and artisans accompany Pedro Menendez de Aviles on the expedition that establishes the community of San Agustin (St. Augustine, Florida).
1570—New Spain’s (Colonial Mexico) population includes 20,569 blacks and 2,439 mulattoes.
1573—Professor Bartolome de Albornoz of the University of Mexico writes against the enslavement and sale of Africans.
1591—Fall of the Empire of Songhai.
1598—Isabel de Olvera, a free mulatto, accompanies the Juan Guerra de Resa Expedition which colonizes what is now New Mexico.
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